The latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that Black women experience a maternal mortality rate three times higher than white women.

We need a complete reimagining of how our healthcare system provides support for Black and brown people — and those who are closest to the impacts need to lead on solutions. 

That’s why for three days in June, dozens of organizers and advocates gathered to talk about the state of healthcare in this country. Not just to talk and form community — to create the necessary scaffolding for a movement that demands a complete shift of our understanding of healthcare.

In one session of the convening on birth justice, I got to hear from birth workers, doulas, and midwives, who invited us all into a deeper conversation about what it means to bring life into a system that’s rigged against you. I heard from a number of organizers who have fought back against stigma in the healthcare system in Alabama.

“I became involved because I believe the people closest to the problem are the ones often carrying the solutions,” said Charity Howard, a certified midwife assistant and trained Doula who helped co-write the bill that decriminalized midwifery in Alabama. “I’ve seen what happens when people come together and say we deserve better…I’ve watched communities create support where systems left gaps.”  

Chauntel Norris, a birth & postpartum doula and lactation counselor, shared how witnessing a friend’s home birth in Alabama — when it was still against the law — changed the trajectory of her life.

After seeing her friend treated with care, love, and dignity, she realized what had been taken from her in her own birth experience. That “a-ha” moment led her to become a doula, to ensure others would not have to choose between their dignity or their safety.

After her certification, Norris went on to share a story of how a member of her family had to give birth in prison while shackled to a bed. The lack of care present, coupled with the fact that a male officer had to be present to “monitor” this birth, completely shifted the way Norris understood birth justice.     

Norris went on to co-found Alabama Prison Birth Project, an organization set out to improve the health of newborns birthed by women in custody, while strengthening maternal bonds and sense of self. 

Voices for Birth Justice defines birth justice as “a movement that believes when birthing people recognize their innate power to make the best health decisions for themselves and their families during all stages of the pregnancy, birth, and the post-birth period, that power will have a transformational impact on their family and community.”

Birth work isn’t just about babies being born. “It’s about building the world those babies are born into,” said Staysha Quentrill — the only practicing Black midwife in West Virginia. “It’s the educators, the janitors, the people putting air in our tires. It’s all of us. We all have a role in safeguarding what community care can look like.”

Quentrill had a midwife present for the births of her seven children, and decided to become a midwife herself to share that life-changing experience with others. She became a doula, childbirth educator, and lactation support specialist before pursuing certification as a professional midwife in 2020. 

The birth providers in that room are clearly experts in their field, but they’re also working to meet the need in their specific communities. 

Because it’s not enough to aim for competence in our healthcare systems. What we need is cultural congruence, a certain level of care rooted in lived experience, shared understanding, and trust.

During the session, we did a “gallery walk” of true or false statistics, and confronted what we’ve been taught about birth, our bodies, and our healthcare system. One fact I learned: Planned home births with registered midwives have reduced rates of newborn loss and emergency intervention when compared to planned hospital births attended by physicians.

In retrospect, this shouldn’t have been as shocking, considering Black communities have especially been excluded and denied from recognition by traditionally white institutions.

Black and Indigenous communities have always created care networks outside of systems that were built to exclude them, and birth work is no different. While we work towards a new healthcare system that works for everyone, we have to learn to build around our current system that silences and disregards Black and brown bodies. 

I felt a deep admiration to be able to hear from these people who see mothers and parents in one of the most vulnerable moments of their lives. Birth workers know what their communities need, because those are the same places they breathe, eat and live too. One of those needs is empowerment.

Real power is the ability to shape your own life. To make decisions about your future. To care for the people you love. To recover from setbacks. To participate fully in your community. 

The birth workers I met at this convening know that — that’s why they’re some of the 80+ leaders from around the country who are coming together with Community Change to design a blueprint of health justice solutions that cut across geographies.

Black and brown folks are constantly asked to prove that we are worthy of care, time and investment. In that room, I felt true power for the first time in a long time. We all deserve the gift of more time, dignity and care and together, none of us are powerless.